by Bruce, Leo
“You’re from the Yard, I see,” Beef continued. “If I had known you were coming I shouldn’t have bothered to go all the way down to Dover. He’s tucked in nicely a few carriages down. My name’s Beef.”
The detective heard these apparently disconnected sentences without surprise.
“I heard you was hanging around,” he remarked.
“Yes,” said Beef. “I am acting for Lord Edenbridge.”
I saw the detective examining Beef’s face when he made that remark as though he expected to see a wink or a twinkle there. But Beef remained quite solemn, if not pompous. After a few moments the detective rose and, explaining that he must keep an eye on “our friend,” marched off down the passage. Beef turned to me.
“So they think Greenbough’s done it, do they?” he said.
“Not necessarily,” I returned. “They may want him for a witness or they may want him for something else. At any rate they’re evidently not going to let him slip out of the country.”
Beef settled down into his corner and said very little more as the train rolled on towards Dover.
I had long since given up trying to unravel the tangled skein of events, and sat reading my newspaper without giving more than an occasional thought to this peculiar case. But after half an hour or so, a thought occurred to me.
“Why don’t they arrest him straight away?” I asked Beef. “Why do they waste this detective’s time by sending him all the way to Dover? They could have got him at Victoria Station.”
“Ah,” said Beef, assuming the patronising manner he was only too ready to adopt when he wanted to explain a technical detail to me, “that would never do, that wouldn’t. What proof would they have he meant to go abroad? No, the way they like to get them in a case like this is with one foot on the boat and one on shore, as you might say. Then they can bring up in evidence that he was arrested while attempting to escape abroad.”
“I see.”
“They’ll need to with this man,” chuckled Beef. “I don’t see what they can have against him except their suspicions. I mean, I know he is a funny character, but that is not enough for a murder charge.”
“Obviously,” I remarked coldly.
Just then the detective returned.
“How’s he getting on?” asked Beef, as though the man had been visiting an invalid.
“He’s doing nicely,” replied the detective. “Sitting in the corner of the carriage, looking at the landscape as though he thought he might be leaving England before long. Only he’s making a mistake there.”
The two men seemed to think there was something supremely funny about this, for they laughed together with a good deal of thigh slapping. I kept a very reserved manner and said nothing to encourage them in their noisy behaviour. But I felt greatly relieved when the train began to approach Dover.
“There will be a couple of our fellows waiting,” explained the detective. “I expect we shall take him into custody just as he is going through the barrier. You don’t really need to come,” he added to the Sergeant.
“I think I shall keep my eye on him to the last,” returned Beef. “I am not saying anything against your methods. But you never know, you know, do you?”
Arrived at Dover, I watched from the railway carriage window and saw Greenbough step quickly from the next coach. Beef had left me and I saw him stalking the boxing manager in his most melodramatic way. The more cool and practised Scotland Yard man walked calmly a little way behind Green-bough; and so the procession moved towards the barrier.
It was not long before I was on my way after them, and I was in time to see a pair of plain-clothes men standing near the passport officials. There was very little hesitation or fuss, as soon as Greenbough showed his passport one of them stepped forward, and a moment later the man was being led away.
I was not near enough to hear what charge was made against him or to see the expression on his face when he discovered that he had been followed. But it was with some satisfaction that I watched the arrest. At least, I thought, even if the most obvious suspect has turned out to be guilty, the murderer of Beecher will not have gone unpunished.
26
When we got back to London, I announced my intention of returning to my flat. “It is obviously no good my wasting any more time with you,” I said to Beef.” I don’t say I haven’t enjoyed some parts of this case, and it was pleasant to be in the familiar atmosphere of a public school. But from the literary point of view the whole thing is hopeless.”
“How’s that?” asked Beef.
“Well, you must see for yourself,” I told him. “You can’t have a detective novel in which there are two murders, two of the most obvious suspects possible, and both of them guilty. It would practically be defrauding the public. They expect surprises for the twopence they have paid to their lending libraries.”
“How do you know there won’t be surprises?” asked Beef.
That made me impatient. “Well, the case is over,” I said.
“Except for my report to Inspector Stute.”
I snorted incredulously, and tried to make Beef see that I was impatient to get away. “What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Just finish my investigations,” was his surprising reply.
“Oh,” I said ironically. “You haven’t finished yet, then?”
“No, not yet,” said Beef. “There’s another three or four days’ work to do before I throw my hand in.”
I grew rather angry. “Another three or four days’ spending of Lord Edenbridge’s money,” I pointed out.
“Well, yes,” admitted Beef, “there will be expenses.”
“And what are these further investigations of yours?”
Beef chuckled.
“First of all,” he said, “I have got to nip down to Penshurst and fetch young Freda up to London.”
“Indeed!” I exclaimed ironically.
“Yes,” said Beef, “and take her round to Brixton Gaol. And I shall take Rosa there, too. After all, they are the only ones who can identify the strangers in each case.”
“Very ingenious, and I hope you have a pleasant drive with Freda. Only don’t expect me to waste my time on that sort of thing.”
“Then,” said Beef, quite unperturbed, “I want to make a thorough examination of Mr. Jones’ belongings.”
“Yes,” I said. “What else?”
“Then I am going to have a talk with someone who speaks Spanish.”
“What for?”
“I want to know what they meant in the Spanish café that night, when they said that what was written on that piece of paper wasn’t quite correct.”
“You’re deliberately being mysterious,” I accused him.
“No, I’m not,” said Beef. “And I’ll tell you what else I’m going to do. I’m going to find out the name of the moneylender that got into trouble for lending to Lord Hadlow.”
“How do you suppose that will help you?”
Beef held up his hand. “All in good time,” he said. “But when I have got this clear you can come along with me to Stute and hear me make my report.”
I admit that I did feel a certain wavering on that point, for it seemed to me that once again the Sergeant might have something up his sleeve. I grudged him the possibility, because his conduct of those things really had seemed inefficient to me, but I had to be prepared for anything. I told him to ’phone me if he got any farther, and left him to go about his business. I really could not see that there was much point in my following him round any longer when, except for the few touches of detail he might be able, to put in, the case was virtually ended.
Besides, there was something else I wanted to do. I wanted to see Rosa again. It had been no momentary or superficial attraction which I had felt towards the beautiful Spanish girl. In no case which Beef had investigated had anything happened to me that I felt was quite so stirring as this. I could see her quiet face with its expression of reserve, melting as it had done into distress as she had tho
ught of her brother. Besides, I didn’t feel that Beef had paid enough attention to this aspect of the second murder. With his airy statement that he liked foreigners, he had dismissed the whole of the Spanish question from his investigation. I therefore had something more than an excuse to take me to the Beechers’ home.
It was not without trepidation that, some evenings later, I rang the bell. I had to admit that Rosa had shown very little encouragement towards my attempts to express my sympathy with her. Her manner had always been somewhat quiet and perhaps it was for this that I respected her most, especially when I remembered Sheila Benson in Case with No Conclusion, and Anita with Jacobi’s Circus.
She, herself, opened the door to me. At once I was dismayed to see a frown on her forehead.
“Why do you come here again?” were the words with which she greeted me, and she spoke sharply.
“Miss Martinez,” I began, “I would be grateful for yet a little more information, if I may presume on your patience.”
“Oh, don’t talk like a book,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Perhaps,” I ventured to suggest, “you might care to ask me in, when I will try to explain.”
With a very poor grace she led the way into the front room in which Beef and I had first been received.
“My colleague, Sergeant Beef,” I began, “doesn’t seem to attach so much importance as I do to the possibility of your brother having been murdered through his association with some of the disreputable Spaniards we met at that café.”
To my amazement, she seemed to grow extremely angry at this harmless remark. A flush was on her face and she stamped her foot in a way which reminded me of her fiery Latin blood.
“Impudence!” she said. “How dare you call my fellow-countrymen disreputable?”
I cleared my throat. “I have the greatest admiration,” I assured her, “for the Iberian people, and I should be the last to make any generalisation of a derogatory nature about them. I was referring only to those I met in the café to which you directed us.”
She seemed to be struggling with herself for a moment and then sighed, as though she had decided to treat me as harmless, if rather troublesome. I saw my hopes of becoming better acquainted with her rapidly disappearing.
“What do you want to know about the Spaniards?” she asked.
“Anything you care to tell me,” I assured her. “But I am certain that there is something which will help us.”
“You went to the café?” she asked. “You went there with your Sergeant Beef?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak to any of the people there?”
“I personally addressed no one. I thought they looked a most dangerous collection of men and women. But the Sergeant certainly had some conversation.”
“With whom?” asked Rosa, more calmly now.
“With the proprietor of the place and with another man.” And I briefly described the Spaniard who had come to our table and shown such interest in the questions Beef asked.
Rosa nodded. “I think I know which one you mean,” she assured me. Without another word she crossed the room and opened a little Victorian bureau. I saw her turn over the papers that lay within it as if with feverish haste. But when she returned to me she had nothing in her hand but a rather faded photograph which she held out to me. I carefully scrutinised the face. It was of a man in his thirties, obviously of one of the Mediterranean races, very dark, his black hair greased back from his forehead, and with a thick moustache of the kind worn some years ago by Spaniards and Italians.
“Was that the man?” she asked.
Again I examined the photograph. Was it? The man who had spoken to us had been at least fifteen years older than this, and it was not easy at first to recognise in the hirsute Latin that same heavy person who had leant over us in the café. But gradually I saw that they were indeed identical. Something in the expression of the eyes and the shape of the forehead told me, without doubt, that I was looking at an early photo of our acquaintance.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the man. He has changed a good bit since this was taken, but I am quite certain it is the same man.”
Rosa nodded, and there seemed to be something of triumph in her voice. “My father,” she said. “Stan’s father. I thought as much; I knew he had some reason for going down to that place. My father wouldn’t dare show himself here. Either my mother or I would have been capable of killing him.”
I looked at those flashing dark eyes and I believed her statement in its most literal sense.
“But I suppose he wanted to see his son and that is why Stan has been meeting him surreptitiously.”
I was very proud of having secured this extremely important information. But I didn’t wish Rosa to think that my only reason for coming here was to further our investigations.
“Miss Martinez,” I said, “I want you to know that I admire you and your conduct through this matter more than I can say.” And as though involuntarily, I stretched out my hand and touched the brown skin of her arm where it fell at her side.
She might have been a tigress with a litter of cubs. As though my touch were leprous she snatched her hand away and before I had time to guard myself, I felt a stinging backhanded blow across my cheek.
“Miss Martinez!” I said reproachfully.
“Get out!” were the only two words I heard. Really it seemed that there was nothing to do but to obey.
27
My thoughts were very bitter as I returned to my apartments that night. I have never supposed that I am a man who could be called attractive to women, for I have noticed that they seem to be interested in more barbaric and uncouth young men, and except in rare cases to have little or no appreciation for qualities of mind and literary achievement. But I didn’t think that I should meet with such ingratitude and failure to understand my wish to sympathise. I was willing to make all the allowance I could for Rosa Martinez. She had lost a brother who was very dear to her, and her home life was made distressing by the dipsomania of her mother. But I could see no justification for the violence with which she had acted. Was I, I asked myself, such a repugnant person? No, for more than one woman of kindlier disposition than Rosa’s had shown themselves susceptible to my approaches. It must, I realised, be the more ambiguous association with Sergeant Beef, and the unfortunate business of investigation, which had set her against me. She probably thought of me as a sort of nosy-parker who was prying into her misfortune for the sake of writing a story.
There was only one thing for it, I must give up this thankless task of recording Beef’s cases. I had just wasted three weeks, and a good deal of time and money which I could ill afford, in following his peregrinations, with no result that could lend itself to the writing of a satisfactory book. Arrests there had been, but of people so obviously guilty that to make an exciting novel out of it all had become impossible. No, I said to myself, I will have no more to do with it. Insurance provided me with a living once, and it should do so again. Why should I waste the best years of my life touting in public-houses for information to help the most plebeian of literary investigators? Beef might be clever, might even be brilliant, or he might be just lucky. There was one thing quite certain about him, he was not a gentleman, and I could scarcely blame people for tarring me with the same brush.
Full of these reproachful thoughts I drove to his house, having only the loyal intention of giving him the information I had just discovered. I was sufficiently embroiled to feel that this at least I would do for him before saying good-bye for ever. I would tell him the most important thing of all about the identity of the man in the Spanish café, then I would say farewell. The Sergeant could find someone else to write up his cases for him. I would be satisfied with selling Life Insurance.
When I arrived in Lilac Terrace I found him at home, and, perhaps a little too eagerly, I gave him my news.
“Beef,” I said, “I’ve discovered the identity of the man who spoke to us in the Spanish café. It was B
eecher’s father!”
Beef deliberately yawned.
“Yes,” he said, “I knew that. Didn’t you see a photo on the wall in their house? It was showing his wedding. Mind you, it was a good many years old, but I recognised him.”
Not unnaturally, I was annoyed.
“If you wouldn’t be so secretive,” I said, “you would save a great deal of time and trouble. I went to great lengths to discover who that man was, and you could have told me beforehand that you knew already.”
Beef grinned.
“Nobody asked you to go careering round to that house,” he observed. “I suppose you wanted to have another look at Rosa.”
“I never want to see Rosa again,” I returned.
“What happened?” asked Beef clumsily. “Did she take a sock at you?”
I felt that it was wiser to ignore this question, and asked Beef how his own investigations had proceeded.
“Very nicely,” said Beef, “very nicely indeed. I’ve took the two young ladies to Brixton as I said I should, and I’ve examined Jones’ things, and this is what I’ve found in one of his pockets.”
Triumphantly Beef held up a large rusty key.
“What’s it the key of?” I enquired.
“The gymnasium,” said Beef. “And now I’m ready to make my report to Inspector Stute. I’ve rung him up and he is coming round here in about half-an-hour’s time. I suppose we’d better hop down to the ‘Angel’ and get a couple of quarts.”
“I don’t think,” I said, “that you will find Inspector Stute very eager for anything of that kind. He is not, you must remember, an ordinary policeman, but a very responsible officer from Scotland Yard.”
“Must be hospitable,” said Beef.
“You might perhaps offer him a whisky and soda.”
Beef shook his head.
“I’ll have no fancy drinks here,” he said, and there was nothing for it but to follow his plan.
Stute arrived, looking spruce and confident, about forty minutes later, and when Mrs. Beef had left the three of us alone both the Inspector and I asked Beef to come straight to the point.